Emanuele's 24-year-old victim pleaded with the court to impose a more severe sentence, describing her assailant as "a sex offender who singles out unfortunate and vulnerable women with no remorse and [he] must be labeled as such." She pointed out that Emanuele's defense attorney, Patrick Toscano, had treated the assault as a trivial matter, dismissing it in public comments as a "10-minute lapse in judgment" and insinuating that the woman was a willing participant.

Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Schweers allowed that Toscano's comments were "ill-advised" but he insisted that the leniency granted to the former police officer was "fair in the interest of justice."

As he pronounced the sentence, Judge Thomas F. Scully did his best to depict the ridiculously light punishment as an onerous burden to disgraced predator, who was now deprived of his "childhood dream" of being part of the State's coercive apparatus. At the time he was cashiered from the police department, the 33-year-old Emanuele was being paid $114, 712 a year to "protect and serve" a town of 14,000 people with a crime rate well below the national average -- and a median annual household income of roughly $55,000.[NOAD]